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What’s Next for Google in China?

Google on Monday announced a new approach to its operations in China. But the company’s late-night blog post leaves some questions about its new approach unanswered, and whether they fly with the Chinese government remains to be seen.

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Google said it would stop redirecting Chinese users to its Hong Kong search engine.

The key change is in how Chinese visitors to Google.cn, Google’s China web address, are taken to Google.com.hk, its Hong Kong site. Unlike Google’s old Google.cn search site, which it censored in compliance with Chinese regulations, the U.S. company doesn’t filter the Hong Kong site — although it is subject to filtering by China’s Great Firewall for users inside China. Since March, Google.cn has automatically redirected to Google.com.hk, but now users in China land on a clickable image of a search box that links to the Hong Kong site.

In Google’s post, David Drummond, the company’s chief legal officer, says that the Chinese government found the redirect “unacceptable.” But will Beijing see the new method — what Google calls a “landing page” that points to the same destination as the redirect — as much of a change?

Drummond also writes that the changes were prompted by concerns that China wouldn’t renew Google’s Internet Content Provider license. “Without an ICP license, we can’t operate a commercial website like Google.cn — so Google would effectively go dark in China,” he says.

But Internet users in China still have access to Google.com even if Google.cn went away, unless Beijing were to start blocking access for users in China to Google’s global sites (like Google.com), an escalation analysts have said is unlikely. Search results that point to censored sites are still unavailable, and Google.com has been blocked by China in the past, but the idea that Chinese Internet users could search on Google.cn and no other Google sites is a long-running misconception.

In China, government officials haven’t yet had much to say. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday that the Chinese government “encourages foreign enterprises to operate in China according to the law,” and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said it wouldn’t be able to respond immediately.

While the world waits for the next move, what do you think of Google’s new approach to China? Will it work? Do you think the Chinese government will accept the change? Let us know in the comments.